Studies in Irian Languages, Part II

Tehit is a SVO language with relatively simple morphology, almost entirely dedicated to the
tracking of person-number-gender of referent nominals. This pronominal agreement is marked on a
wide variety of word classes, including verbs, adjectives, possessives, quantifiers, inalienable nouns
(partitives and kin terms], prepositions, relativizers, and even conjunctions. The agreement prefixes,
made up of an efficient set of single-consonant phonetic signals, are invariant regardless of word
class usage or referent case role:

(1) ISG t-
IINC /-
lEXC m-
2 n-

3SF m-

3SM w-
3PL 7-

As seen above, gender is manifest only in third person singular forms. First person plural
explicitly includes or excludes the hearer. Ambiguity that results from homophonous forms, m- for
both 'lEXC* and *3SF' and under-differentiation of number in the second person, is most often
resolved either by the number of a suppletive root, or by anaphoric context. Plural is usually
indicated by increased height in a suppletive root's first vowel, see (2) and (3).

(2) Om m-ase m-ak biele
3SF 3SF-sleep:SG 3SF-at:SG garden

om m-Q.

3SF 3SF-P0S:SG

She lives at her garden.

(3) Mam m-ese m-ik biele
We:EXC lEXC-sleep:PL lEXC-at:PL garden

mam m-i.

lEXC 1EXC-P0S:PL

We live at our garden.

Occasionally, a noun phrase will be marked with an agreement enclitic that draws from the same
set given in (1). If the last word of a noun phrase ends in a vowel, that word may include an enclitic
denoting the gender and number of the third person head noun, as in (4), (5) and (6).

(4 ) wi hra Nago w-ase-m
place REL God 3SM-sleep-3SF

where God lives

(5) T-nok dait na trar o-u w-kedi-m.
iSG-know NEG person old DET-3SM 3SM-name-3SF

I don't know the parent's name.

(6) Korik bol oko-m w-natehia kat I m-aheit
pig house DEM-3SF 3SM-leave.behind INT 3SF-stay

The domestic pig he left behind, it stayed.

Also, if a transitive verb phrase ends in a vowel and no nominal object is expressed, the verb
phrase may include the enclitic, denoting the number and gender of the fronted, missing, or
understood object, as in (7).

(7) Wa-wet o-u w-lok oli m-aka / w-hitung oli-m,
3SM-child DET-3SM 3SM-pick.up again 3SF-come 3SM-count again-3SF

His child again picked up another (grub) and again distributed (it).

"N

ISSN 0126 -2874

NUSA

LINGUISTIC STUDIES OF INDONESIAN
AND OTHER LANGUAGES IN INDONESIA

VOLUME 47, 2000

STUDIES IN IRIAN LANGUAGES

PART II

Edited by
GER P. REESINK